


Dissonance

by Yati



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Gen, time compression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-19
Updated: 2004-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yati/pseuds/Yati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When realities overlap, it's hard to tell what's real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissonance

She is waiting for the moment when the world will end.

She does not know who she is, except she is standing in this hallway, staring at the sky below her.

She knows that her castle is empty. All her guardians have fallen and she is alone. She watches as the dark clouds drift below her, nebulous and ominous. She can sense the six children struggling to make their way through Time, and she waits for them and the end of the world.

She is the Sorceress, she remembers that now, and she is waiting.

She can feel the magic pulsating through her veins, the rush of power drowning everything else. When she listens to the wind she can hear it singing her name (and yet when she thinks of it she cannot recall who she is) and the tug of sorcery pulling at her, pulling her. She can reach out and give the universe a gentle caress and everything will collapse into itself

              just

                     like

       that.

She is the one who is all powerful in this domain. Time is hers to manipulate and control. She will compress Time and distort its natural flow. She will destroy everything within it, all who live within it.

But she is waiting, because she will not compress Time just yet. Now all she wants to do is to watch the clouds and (try to) remember a time when sunshine actually touched her skin, and to (try to) pretend she remembers how it feels. The world was young once, once upon a time ago, and the skies were bluer and the grass was greener, and petals drifted in the lazy breath of a summer's morning.

She is the Sorceress and the memories are not hers.

Time is hers to control and shape, and she can touch it with her fingertips and see the past,

               ( a glint of steel in the dark-before-dawn; blood, red, on the jagged stones

                running panting unable to catch their breaths, hurry, hurry, _hurry_

                _don't run too fast or I'll never catch up_

                a young man being dragged onto the dance floor, stumbling, falling; falling away, falling away

                _didn't I tell you that I'll always catch you when you fall?_ )       

and she could change all that, change it all

               ( a couple dancing in the ballroom; dancing the night away

                it's all about love, and courage, and friendship; and believing, you just have to _believe_

                a kiss underneath the stars, and another, and another, and too many to count )

but she doesn't want to.

She will destroy them here, and Time will stop with their deaths. She will destroy them when they push open the door and enter her throne room, and they will feel her wrath. And for a brief moment she feels Time coalescing, and she can see the future -- Hell's Judgement, Apocalypse, and Apocalypse again, and they will fall and fade and the future will not exist because the past is no more--

And she (thinks she) is the Sorceress, yet she is standing in front of the throne room. She is staring at the clouds below her, and she is shuddering at the cold and the way Time is collapsing around them. Squall's hand is on her shoulder, his touch light and barely there. As she turns to face him she wonders, dimly, if her eyes are golden and alight with sorcery.

"Let's go," he says, and she remembers kissing him underneath the starlight and she cannot tell whether or not that has happened yet.


End file.
